1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a selective call receiver, and in particular to a selective call receiver having a message displaying function.
2. Description of Related Art
Selective call receivers have been widely used for various purposes and, especially, a small-sized and lightweight selective call receiver called a pager is suitable for being taken on the road. One of basic functions of the selective call receiver is to inform by beep sound, vibration, or light a user of the incoming call. Further, some selective call receiver has not only such an alert function but also a function of displaying a numeric message on an liquid-crystal display (LCD). However, since only numerals are used to display information on LCD, the transmitted information cannot be interpreted with precision.
To improve power of expression, a selective call receiver having a conversion table from a numerical code to a display character code has been proposed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 7-226969. More specifically, when detecting a two-digit message code from received message data, a display character code corresponding to the message code is retrieved from the conversion table. In this manner, all message codes are converted to the corresponding display characters which are used to display the received information on LCD.
However, the prior art cannot provide a sufficiently wide variety of display characters but only the limited power of display expression. In the conventional receiver, since each of the two digits of the message code is selected from 10 numeral characters: 0-9, the maximum number of display characters stored in the conversion table is limited to 100. Therefore, it is very difficult to extend the variety of display characters without reducing transmission performance.